I am quite honestly totally lost here.
It seems pretty clear that I need to forget the preview of this series entirely: Huntress and Red Arrow (at least for now) are firmly on the side of the heroes trying to prevent Terry Sloan from terraforming New Earth 2 in this issue. But, I'll admit that I keep defaulting to that storyline in my head, forcing me to take a moment each issue to remember that it's not (at this point) the story that Wilson is actually telling.
However, putting aside the preview, I'm still confused. We still haven't been given any reason why Sloan wants to terraform New Earth 2. To the extent that he addresses it, Wilson seems to imply that Sloan is doing it in anger over the people of New Earth 2 not appreciating the fact that he's the one that saved them. However, we're not given any reason for why he just now decided to get all "vengeful god" over that transgression. It's like he's a kid that woke up one day and decided to disassemble his Lego fortresses.
Moreover, Wilson continues jumping from the past and the present, and it's getting hard to keep them straight. We're supposed to juggle the revelation that Power Girl now hates Val-Zod in the present with Lois's story of discovering her humanity in the past. The problem is that the Lois story is a moving one: after a group of scared refugees reject her, she later uses her network systems to connect people to relatives from whom they were separated during Planetfall. Given that Alan is now a lobotomized avatar of the Green, Lois is the closest this series has to an emotional core. But, we're distracted from her story by the chaos surrounding it.
I have to say that I just can't believe that we're here. I loved this series when it started, but, just as we got to know the characters, we got caught in the Michael Bay movie that the Darkseid war was. Now, a lot of those characters are lost to us; beyond just Alan, Kendra is reduced to exploring the world on her own and Jay is building houses in "Midwest City." Honestly, I think we need an issue or two where we just stay firmly in the present and focused on one character so that we can have something approaching a connection with a central character. Wilson starts to get there with Lois in this issue, but I'm doubtful that the focus will remain on her. I guess we'll see, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to give Wilson to show me.
** (two of five stars)
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